Anybody read a good book lately?

[Geowhizzer]

Just finished re-reading Ian Fleming's Casino Royale, the first James Bond novel.

Good, engrossing spy novel.  None of the gadgetry that is prevalent in the movies.  Bond relies on his quick thinking and abilities as a spy, not to mention his ability to play chemin de fer.

I'm very interested in seeing how they adapt the book to the movie concept of James Bond.

There is already a movie version of Casino Royale. If I remember correctly, it sucked.

There has not been an "official" Bond movie (by EON productions). 

There have been two adaptations of Casino Royale:

1.  A one-hour US television version in 1954 which featured an Americanized "Jimmy Bond."

2.  A Peter Sellers spoof called "Casino Royale." 

[General_Failure]

Incidentally, this thread was started on March 16, 2002, (by MURP) and has 323 replies.  The "Anyone seen a good movie" thread was started on December 09, 2004 (by henchmanUK,) more than two and a half years later.  It has 1930 replies.

People will admit to watching a movie a lot quicker than they will reading a book, even if it's a good book. I've read 13 Discworld novels so far this year, and I don't think I've mentioned those here.

Nerd! Keep it to yourself!

Quiet you, or I'll send you back to where I found you.

[Diomedes]

That's no joke, PhillyPhan.  Big Brother just leveled up, so now he's got Involuntary Transportation IV, which can't be resisted short of Mana Shield V, which you probably don't have because you're clearly neither High Elf or Level 60.

[General_Failure]

High Elf. That sounds like a good title for you Dio.

[PhillyPhanInDC]

High Elf. That sounds like a good title for you Dio.

= Dio

[PhillyPhreak54]

Donald Harstad writes a series about an Iowa sherriff that I enjoyed. I read all of the books already. It's a police procedural type book.

My latest reads are Steve Hamilton's Alex McKnight series. Pretty good. A little short for my liking (only about 330 pages on average) but good nonetheless.

[Tomahawk]

Just finished re-reading Ian Fleming's Casino Royale, the first James Bond novel.

Good, engrossing spy novel.  None of the gadgetry that is prevalent in the movies.  Bond relies on his quick thinking and abilities as a spy, not to mention his ability to play chemin de fer.

I'm very interested in seeing how they adapt the book to the movie concept of James Bond.

There is already a movie version of Casino Royale. If I remember correctly, it sucked.

There has not been an "official" Bond movie (by EON productions). 

There have been two adaptations of Casino Royale:

1.  A one-hour US television version in 1954 which featured an Americanized "Jimmy Bond."

2.  A Peter Sellers spoof called "Casino Royale." 

The Peter Sellers version is the one I've seen and to which said BOOOOOOOO!

I'm done now though. Sorry for ruining a thread about books with my nonsensical movie jibberish.

[rjs246]

Just finished reading Night by Elie Wiesel. He won the Nobel Peace Prize and is a holocaust survivor. The fact this book wasn't mandated reading (along with the Diary of Anne Frank) when I was in school is baffling. I hope it is now. Only 120 pages, but the most powerful 120 pages I have ever read.

This is why I hate Oprah. She's turning one of the most powerful books ever written into pop culture. She thinks she's doing right by people to get them to read good literature but all she's doing is cheapening classics and mixing in some other bullshtein worthless books on a lark.

Also, it drives me nuts that people have completely discarded A Million Little Pieces as an inspirational story of personal triumph because the details of this dude's legal history were smudged. It's an amazing book and if there was a sentence on the first page that read "This book is BASED ON my life and my struggle with Alcohol, Crack, Glue, PCP and Gasoline" all of this nonsense would have been avoided. Ignorant fargs who think that since his memoirs aren't 110% true (and no one's are, trust me) that it isn't worth reading or that what he overcame wasn't worth being amazed by should stuff their Oprah worship into a speargun and impale themselves on it. And good farging riddance. The most powerful media figure of our time shouldn't make it her business to build up or tear down people who write. Writing a book is farging difficult. Writing a book that speaks to people is nearly farging impossible. Oprah can get farged.

[Diomedes]

Call your sponsor, dude.

[Sgt PSN]

So Oprah's bad for making reading "cool"?  How is getting people to read classics going to cheapen it?  It's a book, not a band.  It's not like the book is going to crossover from it's gritty and creative roots to attract a bigger audience. 

[rjs246]

You're missing my point. She isn't making it cool. She is single handedly determining which books are worthy and which are not to an audience of millions of sheep that hang on her every word. People SHOULD read Night. Not because Oprah says so, because its an important book about an important event.

Oprah taking it upon herself to help the greater good is nonsense. She has become judge jury and executioner. Do you know how many people will now not read A Million Little Pieces because she didn't stand behind it? She put her personal embarrassment ahead of any sort of respect that she should have for a man who wrote a very powerful book, and the sad thing is that she has the media power to do that whenever she pleases because her 'Book Club' has become the end all and be all of what the masses will read. It's a farging sham.

[General_Failure]

How many of those people were going to read it anyway?

[rjs246]

Who cares? Literature is the most powerful medium that we have and it is not her place to lord over what gets read and what doesn't and she has done exactly that.

[General_Failure]

To be fair, she's lording it over people who watch daytime talk shows. Any book without watercolor pictures is probably going to be over their heads.

[Sgt PSN]

Yeah, if that was your point then I totally missed it. 

I look at it like this though, if she's interested people in reading who otherwise might not be then she's doing more good than bad, regardless of what she's telling them to read.  I don't watch Oprah, don't follow her and for the most part, don't really care.  But I do know that she's extremely generous with here time and money.  She's worked hard for everything she's got and earned every red cent and I can't fault her for doing something to help enrich other people's lives.

So she didn't get behind a particular book.  I don't see the big deal (admittedly, I've never read A Million Little Pieces).  No matter how big she might be, she's not the know all, end all on literature and I think a good majority of her audience knows that.  Sure, there are some who hang on her every word and if Oprah doesn't like it, they won't read it.  But let's be serious here, what are the odds that they would have read it without her?